Honorverse favorite passages

"Harvest Joy, you are cleared to proceed. Good luck!"
"Thank you, Junction Control," Captain Josepha Zachary, commanding officer of the improbably named survey ship HMS Harvest Joy, acknowledged the clearance and the good wishes simultaneously, then turned to Jordin Kare and quirked an eyebrow.
"Junction Control says we can go now, Doctor," she observed. "Do you and Dr. Wix agree?"
"Captain, Dr. Wix and I have been ready to go for days!" Kare replied with an amazingly youthful looking grin. Then he nodded more seriously. "Our people are ready to proceed whenever you are, Captain."
"Well, in that case . . ." Captain Zachary murmured, and crossed the three paces of deck between her and her command chair. She settled into it, turned it to face her helmsman, and drew a deep breath.
"Ten gravities, Chief Tobias," she said formally.
"Ten gravities, aye, Ma'am," the helmsman confirmed, and Harvest Joy began to creep very slowly forward.
Zachary crossed her legs and made herself lean confidently back in her comfortable chair. It probably wasn't strictly necessary for her to project an aura of complete calm, but it couldn't hurt, either.
Her lips tried to twitch into a smile at the thought, but she suppressed it automatically as she watched the navigation plot repeater deployed from the left arm of the command chair. The com screen beside it showed the face of Arswendo Hooja, her chief engineer, and she nodded to the blond-haired, blue-eyed lieutenant commander. Arswendo and she had served together often over the years, and Zachary was grateful for his calm, competent presence at the far end of the com link.
She was just as happy to have avoided a few other presences, whether on the other end of com links or in the flesh. First and foremost among them was Dame Melina Makris, who had made herself a monumental pain in the posterior from the moment she came aboard. So far as Zachary had been able to determine, Makris had no redeeming characteristics, and the captain had taken carefully concealed but nonetheless profound satisfaction in banning all civilians—except Dr. Kare, of course—from Harvest Joy's bridge for the moment of transit.
Now she nodded to Hooja in welcome. Neither of them felt any particular need for words of a time like this, and in Arswendo's case, she was reasonably certain that calm was completely genuine. Which was more than she could say for most of the people aboard her ship. She could feel the tension of her entire bridge crew. Like her, they were all far too professional to be obvious about showing it, yet it was almost painfully evident to someone who knew them as well as she did. And not surprisingly. In the entire two thousand-T-year history of humankind's expansion through the galaxy, exploration ships had done what Harvest Joy was about to do less than two hundred times. It had been almost two T-centuries since the Basilisk terminus of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction had been mapped, and so far as Zachary knew, no living officer in the Star Kingdom, naval or civilian, had ever commanded the first transit through a newly discovered terminus . . . until her. And although she'd been a survey and exploration officer for the better part of fifty T-years, during which she'd made more Junction transits than she could have counted, no one had ever made this particular transit before. That would have been exciting enough, but, logical or not, the perversity of the human imagination persisted in projecting potential disaster scenarios to hone anticipation's edge still sharper.
The icon representing Harvest Joy on the astrogation plot slid slowly down the gleaming line of her projected transit vector. In some respects, it was exactly like a routine transit through one of the well-established Junction termini. And, as far as the navigation guidance from ACS and the pre-transit calculations from Dr. Kare's team were concerned, it might as well have been precisely that. But for all the similarities, there was one enormous difference, because in this case, the figures upon which those calculations were based had never been tested by another ship.
Stop that, she scolded herself. They may never have been tested by another ship, but Kare and his crowd have put over sixty probes into this terminus to compile the readings your precious numbers are based on! Which was true, as far as it went. On the other hand, she reflected with another almost-smile, not a single one of those probes has ever come back again, has it now?
Of course they hadn't. Nothing smaller than a starship could mount a hyper generator, and only something with a hyper generator could hope to pass through a wormhole junction terminus. The scientists' probes had reported faithfully right up to the moment they encountered the interface of the terminus itself, at which point they had simply ceased to exist.
Unlike them, Zachary's ship did have a hyper generator. Which mean Harvest Joy could pass safely through the hyper-space interface which had destroyed the probes . . . probably. Whether or not she would survive whatever lay on the other side of it was another matter, of course. After all, there were all of those deliciously terrifying, venerable legends about the rogue wormholes whose termini deposited doomed travelers directly into the heart of a black hole or some other suitably lethal destination. Not that anyone had ever actually found a wormhole where warships made transit in but never made transit out again.
As if anyone were about to let anything as boring as reality interfere with perfectly good legends, she told herself, and glanced sideways at Kare.
If the astrophysicist cherished any concerns of his own, they were admirably concealed. He stood at the astrogator's shoulder, blue-gray eyes intent as he watched Harvest Joy's progress with total concentration, and the mere fact of his presence ought to be reassuring. Certainly, the RMAIA would scarcely have allowed its chief scientist, his three senior assistants, and over two hundred of its other scientific personnel to depart aboard Harvest Joy if it hadn't been completely confident of their safety, Zachary thought.
Then she snorted. From what she'd seen of Kare and Wix, it would have taken armed Marines to keep them off Harvest Joy, danger or not. If a first transit was exciting for Zachary, it represented the culmination of Kare's entire academic and professional life, and the same was true for Wix.
"We're starting to pick up the eddy right on schedule, Ma'am," Lieutenant Thatcher reported from Astrogation. "The numbers look good."
"Thank you, Rochelle."
Zachary gazed intently at her display, and her nostrils flared as a bright crosshair icon ahead of Harvest Joy's light code blinked the sudden, brilliant green of a transit threshold. The survey ship was precisely where she was supposed to be, tracking straight down the precalculated vector into the frozen funnel of hyper-space which was all a wormhole junction truly was.
"Dr. Kare?" Zachary said quietly. She was the captain, and hers was the ultimate authority to abort the transit if anything looked less than optimal to her. But Kare was the one in charge of the entire expedition; the official organization chart in Zachary's orders from Admiral Reynaud made that clear, whatever Makris thought. Which meant he was the only one who could finally authorize them to proceed.
"Go ahead, Captain," the scientist replied almost absently without ever looking up from Thatcher's plot.
"Very well." Zachary acknowledged, and looked back down at the face on the small screen beside her left knee. "Prepare to rig foresail for transit, Mr. Hooja," she said formally, precisely as if Arswendo hadn't been prepared to do just that for the last twenty minutes.
"Aye, aye, Ma'am. Standing by," he replied with equally redundant formality.
"Threshold in three-zero seconds," Thatcher informed her captain.
"Stand ready, Chief Tobias," Zachary said.
"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Tobias responded, and Zachary consciously reminded herself not to hold her breath as Harvest Joy's icon continued to creep ever so slowly forward.
"Threshold!" Thatcher announced.
"Rig foresail for transit," Zachary commanded.
"Rigging foresail, aye."
To a visual observer, nothing about Harvest Joy changed in any respect as Hooja threw the switch down in Main Engineering, but Zachary's instruments were another matter entirely. Harvest Joy's impeller wedge dropped instantly to half strength as her forward beta nodes shut down and the matching alpha nodes reconfigured. They no longer generated their portion of the survey ship's normal-space stress bands; instead, they projected a Warshawski sail, a circular disk of focused gravitational energy, perpendicular to Harvest Joy's long axis and extending for over three hundred kilometers in every direction.
"Standby to rig aftersail on my mark," Zachary murmured, and Hooja acknowledged once again as Harvest Joy continued to creep forward under the power of her after impellers alone and another readout flickered to life. Zachary watched its flashing numerals climb steadily as the foresail moved deeper and deeper into the Junction. The normal safety margin was considerably wider than usual because of the survey ship's relatively low acceleration and velocity, but that didn't make Zachary feel any less tense.
The numbers suddenly stopped flashing. They continued to climb, but their steady glow told her that the foresail was now drawing sufficient power from the grav waves twisting down the invisible pathway of the Junction to provide movement, and she nodded sharply.
"Rig aftersail now," she said crisply.
"Rigging aftersail, aye," Hooja replied, and Harvest Joy twitched as her impeller wedge disappeared entirely and a second Warshawski sail flicked into life at the far end of her hull from the first.
Zachary looked up from her displays to watch Chief Tobias take the ship through the transition from impeller to hyper sail. The maneuver was trickier than the experienced petty officer made it look, but there was a reason Tobias had been chosen for this mission. His hands moved smoothly, confidently, and Harvest Joy slid through the interface into the terminus without so much as a quiver. He held the survey ship rock-steady, and Zachary grimaced around a familiar wave of queasiness.
No one ever really adjusted to the indescribable sensation of crossing the wall between n-space and hyper-space. Precisely what physical sense reported that sensation was debated. Everyone seemed to have his or her own opinion as to which one it was, but however much they might disagree about that, everyone agreed about the ripple of nausea that accompanied the transition. It wasn't particularly severe in a normal transit, but the gradient was far steeper in a Junction transit, and Zachary swallowed hard.
But if the nausea was sharper, it would also be over sooner, she reminded herself. The familiar thought wound its way through the groove decades of naval experience had worn in her mental processes, and then the maneuvering display blinked again.
For an instant, a fleeting interval no chronometer had ever been able to measure, HMS Harvest Joy ceased to exist. One moment she was where she had been, seven light-hours from Manticore-A; the next she was . . . somewhere else, and Zachary swallowed again, this time in relief. Her nausea vanished along with the brilliant blue transit energy radiating from Harvest Joy's sails, and she inhaled deeply.
"Transit complete," Chief Tobias reported.
"Thank you, Chief," Zachary told him, even as her eyes dropped back to the sail interface readout. She watched the numbers spiral downward even more rapidly than they'd risen, and nodded in profound satisfaction at their reassuring normality.
"Engineering, reconfigure to impeller now."
"Aye, aye, Ma'am," Hooja replied, and Harvest Joy folded her sails back into her impeller wedge and moved forward, once again at the same, steady ten gravities.
"Well, Dr. Kare," Zachary said, looking up from her displays to meet the scientist's eyes. "We're here. Wherever 'here' is, of course."

"Astro Control, this is Harvest Joy, requesting inbound clearance and vector. Harvest Joy, clear."
Josepha Zachary leaned back in her command chair and grinned hugely at Jordin Kare. The astrophysicist returned her grin with interest, then raised his right hand in the ancient thumbs-up gesture.
There was a moment of silence, and then the voice of the Astro Control approach officer sounded clearly over the survey ship's bridge speakers.
"Welcome home, Harvest Joy! We've been waiting for you. Clearance granted; stand by to copy vector."

Amaroq wrote:
Followed by Harvest Joy returning home from Lynx for the first time.

"Astro Control, this is Harvest Joy, requesting inbound clearance and vector. Harvest Joy, clear."
Josepha Zachary leaned back in her command chair and grinned hugely at Jordin Kare. The astrophysicist returned her grin with interest, then raised his right hand in the ancient thumbs-up gesture.
There was a moment of silence, and then the voice of the Astro Control approach officer sounded clearly over the survey ship's bridge speakers.
"Welcome home, Harvest Joy! We've been waiting for you. Clearance granted; stand by to copy vector."

So cute.

Honor was grateful for his silence, for her brain was trying to grapple with too many thoughts at once. Memories of the Academy dominated them, especially of the terrible scene in the commandant's office as Mr. Midshipman Lord Young, broken ribs and collarbone still immobilized, split lips still puffed and distended, one blackened eye swollen almost shut, was required to apologize to Ms. Midshipman Harrington for his "inappropriate language and actions" before the official reprimand for "conduct unbecoming" went into his file.

She should have told the whole story, she thought miserably, but he was the son of a powerful nobleman and she was only the daughter of a retired medical officer. And not a particularly beautiful one, either. Who would have believed the Earl of North Hollow's son had assaulted and attempted to rape a gawky, overgrown lump of a girl who wasn't even pretty? Besides, where was her proof? They'd been alone—Young had seen to that!—and she'd been so shaken she'd fled back to her dorm room instead of reporting it instantly. By the time anyone else knew a thing about it, his cronies had dragged him off to the infirmary with some story about "falling down the stairs" on his way to the gym.

And so she'd settled for the lesser charge, the incident that had happened earlier, before witnesses, when she rebuffed his smugly confident advances. Perhaps if she hadn't been so surprised, so taken aback by his sudden interest and obvious assurance that she would agree, she might have declined more gracefully. But it wasn't a problem she'd ever had before. She'd never developed the techniques for declining without affronting his overweening ego, and he hadn't taken it well. No doubt that "slight" to his pride was what had triggered later events, but his immediate response had been bad enough, and the Academy took a dim view of sexual harassment, especially when it took the form of insulting language and abusive conduct directed by a senior midshipman at a junior. Commandant Hartley had been furious enough with him over that, but who would have believed the truth?

Commandant Hartley would have, she thought. She'd realized that years ago, and hated herself for not telling him at the time. Looking back, she could recognize his hints, his all but overt pleas for her to tell him everything. If he hadn't suspected, he would hardly have required Young to apologize after she'd reduced him to a bloody pulp. Young had counted on neither the strength and reaction time Sphinx's gravity bestowed nor the extra tutoring in unarmed combat Chief MacDougal had been giving her, and she'd known better than to let him up after she had him down. He was only lucky he'd tried for her in the showers, when Nimitz wasn't around, for he would be far less handsome today if the treecat had been present.

No doubt it was as well Nimitz hadn't been there, and, she admitted, there'd been a certain savage joy in hurting him herself for what he'd tried to do. But the response had been entirely out of proportion to his official offense, and no one had ever doubted that his "fall" had been nothing of the sort. Hartley might not have had any proof, but he would never have come down on Young so harshly under the circumstances if he hadn't had a pretty shrewd notion of what had actually happened.

She'd almost been able to hear the sniggers about the homely horse of a girl and her "delusions," and, after all, hadn't she let herself get a little carried away? There'd been no need to pound him into semi-consciousness. That had gone beyond simple selfdefense into the realm of punishment.

"Meaning that I found your first biosculpt technician," Zilwicki told her very, very softly. "The one who rekeyed the genetic sequence on your tongue."
Georgia Young sat absolutely still, stunned into a realm far beyond mere disbelief. How? How could even someone with Anton Zilwicki's reputation have dug that deep? She'd buried that. Buried it where it would never see the light of day again. Buried it behind Elaine, willing even for someone to find her original criminal record because they would stop there, without going still deeper into who she'd been before Elaine.
"Of course," Zilwicki went on, "there's no law against having the number removed, is there? Most freed slaves don't have the resources to pay for it, but having it removed certainly isn't a crime. But he kept the record of the original number, Elaine. The number of a slave the Ballroom has been looking for for years. The slave who sold out an entire freighter full of escaped slaves in return for her own freedom and a half-million Solarian credits. Do you know what they intend to do with that slave when they find her?"
Georgia stared at him, her vocal cords frozen, and he smiled thinly.
"I've never been a slave. I don't pretend to understand what someone who has been one would be willing to do to gain her own freedom. And, by the same token, I don't pretend to stand in judgment on those who want to . . . discuss her actions with her. But I think, Elaine, that if I were her, I'd be far more concerned about the Ballroom than about anything the Star Kingdom's courts might want to discuss with her."
"What . . . what are you offering?" she asked hoarsely.

SNIP


"And if I refuse, you'd really hand me over to the Ballroom? Even knowing what they'd do to me?"
"Yes, I would," Zilwicki said flatly.
"I don't think I believe you," she said softly, then looked at Montaigne. "And despite everything I've heard about you and your relationship with the Ballroom, I don't think you'd let him. I don't think you'd care to live with what they'd do."
"Maybe I wouldn't," Montaigne replied. "No. I'll go further than that. I wouldn't like to live with it. But don't you think for one fucking minute that I wouldn't do it anyway. Unlike Anton, I've spent decades working with the Ballroom and with escaped slaves. Like him, I can't really put myself in their places. The living Hell any slave experiences—even you—is something I can only attempt to imagine. But I've seen what slaves have done to gain their freedom. And I've heard them tell about the other slaves—the ones who helped someone else gain her freedom, and what it cost them. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I require any slave to be that heroic, that self-sacrificing. But I have by God known slaves who were that heroic, and I know the tales of the ones who were that self-sacrificing. And I know that you were directly responsible for sending almost five hundred escaped slaves back into that Hell to save yourself . . . and for a tidy little profit, as well. So, yes, 'Elaine.' If Jeremy catches up with you, I'll live with whatever he does."
Georgia felt something shrivel deep within her as she gazed into those implacable green eyes.
"And think about this," Zilwicki told her. Her eyes snapped helplessly back to him, and the smile he gave her would have suited any shark. "Even if I didn't have the stomach in the end to turn you in to the Ballroom, I don't have to. I found the middleman you used to contact Denver Summervale. I have his deposition, too. I doubt very much that it would stand up in a court of law, but it wouldn't have to. I'd simply send it to Duchess Harrington."
What had already begun to shrivel crumpled completely at the icy promise in Anton Zilwicki's eyes. Georgia Young, Lady North Hollow, looked back and forth between those two very different yet equally unyielding faces, and knew both of them had meant every word they'd said.
"So, 'Elaine,' " Montaigne asked softly, "what's it going to be?"

cthia wrote:

If Honor was so unattractive, then why would Young risk so much? Moreover, why would his attentions be on such a base-born ugly duckling?

He hadn't thought much of her the first time he saw her at Saganami Island. She'd been a full form behind him, which should have put her beneath his notice even if she'd been more than some dirt-grubber from Sphinx. And she'd been plain-faced and unsophisticated with her almost shaven hair and beak of a nose, as well. Hardly worth a second look, and certainly not up to his usual standards. But there'd been something about the way she moved, something in the grace of her carriage, which had piqued his interest.
He'd watched her after that. She'd been the pet of the Academy, of course, her and her damned treecat. Oh, she'd pretended she didn't know how the instructors made her their favorite or how everyone fawned over her filthy little beast, but he'd seen it. Even Chief MacDougal, that lout of a phys ed instructor, had doted on her, and Mr. Midshipman Lord Young's interest had grown until he finally made it known.
And the baseborn bitch had turned him down. She'd snubbed him—snubbed him!—in front of his friends. She'd tried to make it seem she didn't know what she was doing, but she had.

cthia wrote:Isn't a Sphynx a cat? Wait a minute ... let's make sure I got this straight. Young was stupid enough to attack a scorned woman, born of a higher gravity, with the kill skills of a cat on steroids with hand to hand combat? ... ...

Amaroq wrote:That's the way it is, Greentea. If the gender is unknown, the default pronoun is the male one. I didn't give any hints that I was a girl so it wasn't like anyone could've known unless I specifically said something. Eventually, it winds up coming out in some fashion or another. Lol.

I almost almost feel sorry for Elaine here. Talk about being between a rock and hard place.

cthia wrote:What is it with Honor's eyes? They're described as either 'cold dark-brown,' 'hard,' 'leveled missile batteries,' et cetera. In tandem with that cold soprano voice and Sphinx bred muscles, it's little wonder she never had to raise her voice.

Poor Tankersley. Honor must have surely evolved into a butterfly of a looker for Tankersley to still fall for her after that. Or perhaps like my Gemma, Honor is sexy when she's angry.

cthia wrote:

phillies wrote:I confess I had assumed that Cthia's closing line about hanging referenced his gender correctly.

RoseAndHeather I had inferred.

I am using my last name and have mentioned that I write books, which is actually adequate to determine exactly who I am.

Early on in my posting, I didn't have that closing line.

cthia wrote:

phillies wrote:
I confess I had assumed that Cthia's closing line about hanging referenced his gender correctly.

RoseAndHeather I had inferred.

I am using my last name and have mentioned that I write books, which is actually adequate to determine exactly who I am.

Early on in my posting, I didn't have that closing line.

phillies wrote:
But more recently you did.

cthia wrote:

phillies wrote:
I confess I had assumed that Cthia's closing line about hanging referenced his gender correctly.

RoseAndHeather I had inferred.

I am using my last name and have mentioned that I write books, which is actually adequate to determine exactly who I am.

Early on in my posting, I didn't have that closing line.

phillies wrote:
But more recently you did.

cthia wrote:Yes, of course phillies. And believe me, I am thankful that you knew I was male. I was just being honest, on behalf of those in the early days of my postings, who didn't have that benefit.

I think human nature requires a certain 'familiarity' when communicating. *From the beginning of time people enjoyed the knowledge of gender when communicating. Enter BBS's of the 70's, internet chatting, forums, et cetera, and that human element sometimes is removed. For some it yields unfamiliarity of a different, uncomfortable sort. Personally, I'd like to know the gender of who I am talking. Not because I feel either male/female has more intelligent (or any other adjective) input, rather because of the gentlemanly way I was raised. Females are owed a bit more ... respect.

*An aside:
As part Native American, many Native Americans, who continually practice the art of smoke signals, can sometimes tell if the sender is female, via the mechanics involved.